Group Captain David Chapman-Andrews was a consultant dental surgeon in the Royal Air Force. He was born in October 1933 in London into a talented family. His father, Sir Edwin Arthur Chapman-Andrews, was a career diplomat who is especially remembered for helping to put Haile Selassie back on the throne as Emperor of Ethiopia during the Second World War. His mother was Sadie Barbara Chapman-Andrews née Nixon. A sister, Harriet, who specialised in children’s dentistry and ran a private practice near Ely, married Murray Meikle, later professor and head of the department of orthodontics at Guy’s Hospital. During David’s childhood, before the Second World War, he lived in Iraq, Ethiopia and Egypt. David trained at University College Hospital’s National Dental School in Great Portland Street and qualified in 1957. He carried out his National Service in the Royal Navy, where Pamela Machell, who became his wife, was his dental surgery assistant. He served in Singapore and the Indian Ocean. His original intention was to join Johnny Maudant, one of his teachers, who had asked him to join his Devonshire Street private practice, but Maudant and his wife were both killed when their charter plane hit a mountain in Yugoslavia during a snowstorm. By 1962 David had passed both parts of the FDS exam with relative ease at a time when the failure rate could be close to 90%. At that time to enter the final FDS examination you had to be at least 25 and to have spent a year in approved hospital posts. David’s FDS made him eligible for an appointment as a consultant dental surgeon. He worked a couple of locums and began to train in restorative dentistry, but Group Captain Donald Temple Tate suggested he apply to join the RAF dental branch as a specialist; he did so and was appointed as a consultant at Wroughton. Consultant dental surgeons, as they were then called, were expected to provide a specialist service in virtually all aspects of dentistry; they were in post at all six RAF hospitals in the UK and the four overseas. They dealt with simple jaw fractures, routine wisdom teeth, clearances and other relatively minor problems. Anything major was referred to the medically qualified senior consultant Will Baird, who worked in the east wing of the Princess Mary RAF Hospital at Halton, where the RAF plastic surgery specialty was based under Air Vice Marshal George Morley. Here all the major surgery was carried out, including orthognathic, save that most malignancies were referred to the Westminster Hospital. Of the other oral surgery specialists only Douglas Charles Paley Battersea was medically qualified and one, Curtis Ockleford (known as ‘Ockie’), though well thought of, did not have an FDS. (His grade was senior specialist.) David’s previous experience was not ideal for the Wroughton post and he had missed the period of training under Will Baird that his contemporaries received. A request was sent to the RAF to send out a maxillofacial team to treat casualties of the Nigerian Civil War (1967 to 1970). Will Baird decided he was too old to take this on. Don MacLeod was asked but turned it down as, since serving in Aden, he had had a medical condition which made him unfit for service in hot climates. Ockie was asked and immediately volunteered, but his lack of a specialist qualification debarred him from taking a leadership role, so David took this on with Mike Awty, an experienced surgeon from East Grinstead, providing the necessary expertise. There were a few tensions, but the project proved very successful, and the team was subsequently awarded the Wilkinson Sword of Honour for that year. When I served at Wroughton, this was on display in a hospital corridor with David named as the officer in charge. On his return, David spent nine months attached to the maxillofacial unit at Mount Vernon Hospital, which he much enjoyed, and which gave him the further experience he felt he needed. David was the first RAF dental officer to become involved with implants; this predated osseointegrated titanium implants. The implants he used were made of stainless steel with designs, such as the blade vent, or another consisting of three stainless steel pins driven into the alveolus at different angles, supporting a core on which a crown could be placed. I saw the occasional example of his work, which had proved successful in the long term. No doubt he would have continued when titanium implants took over, but these were much more expensive, and funding was not available in the RAF. David had tours in Singapore, Cyprus and I think Germany, with Wroughton as his home base. He had his problems, as do we all, but the quality of his work was not in question. He was also a very talented artist, often painting his own cards with depictions of subjects ranging from marching bands to jazz saxophonists. He illustrated John Hollands’ book *Heroes of the hook* (Quill Publications, 2013) on the Korean War. He also produced and sold videos on service subjects to raise money for the Upottery Airfield Heritage Trust. The Royal Navy was his first love, but he liked to maintain connections with both services. In his later years he enjoyed monthly meetings of the local Aircrew Association, one of four non flyers who had been invited to join. David died on 25 June 2018 at the age of 84. Predeceased by his wife Pamela, whom he married in 1962, they had four children, including Mary and John.